I’ve spent the last few years ‘healing.’ I mean, really healing. Journaling, therapy, podcasts, the whole nine yards. But a while ago, I realized something scary: I was spending more time analyzing my pain than actually living my life. I had become a professional patient.
It’s a quiet slide. You start by wanting to understand the wound, which is sacred work. But then the ‘work’ becomes the identity. You stop asking ‘How do I live?’ and start asking ‘Why am I still not fixed?’
“If you’re always healing, you’re never at home with yourself.”
Ilyse Craft
That line hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so obsessed with the ‘repair’ that I’d basically moved into the workshop and forgotten that there was a house to live in. I was polishing the cracks in the mirror instead of looking at the garden outside the window.
This piece on the ‘consumerist hamster wheel’ of healing is a wake-up call. We’re told that if we just process one more trauma or update one more subconscious program, we’ll finally be ‘fixed.’ But that’s just the Fixer’s Delusion in a fancy new outfit. It’s a way of pretending we’re moving forward while we’re actually just running in place.
“Bypassing is what happens when we use spirituality, psychology, or healing concepts to avoid life; building is what happens when we use them to engage with life.”
Oli Anderson
The difference is simple but brutal. If your ‘healing’ is an excuse not to show up, not to be seen, or not to risk being hurt again… it’s not healing. It’s just a more sophisticated way of hiding.
We aren’t broken machines. We’re just… people. And sometimes the most ‘healing’ thing you can do is put down the manual, close the journal, and go for a walk. If you’ve been feeling the weight of the perpetual patient cycle, you might recognize the feeling of the ‘healing journey’ as a treadmill.
Stop trying to be a finished product. Just be a person. It’s a lot less exhausting.